[% setvar title The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 2004-09-17 %]
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<a name='The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 2004-09-17'></a><h1>The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 2004-09-17</h1>
<p>Another week, another summary, and I'm running late. So:</p>
<a name='This week in perl6-compiler'></a><h1>This week in perl6-compiler</h1>
<a name='The current state of the compiler'></a><h2>The current state of the compiler</h2>
<p>Discussion of the current state of the nascent perl 6 compiler and how
best to contribute to its development even before code has been released
continued. The best way to contribute right now is &quot;Write tests&quot;. Don't
worry about what the test harness should look like, simple tables of rules,
test strings and expected matches will be very welcome.</p>
<p>The status discussion also touched on how to handle different languages
in the closures embedded in rules.</p>
<a name='Bootstrapping the grammar'></a><h2>Bootstrapping the grammar</h2>
<p>Uri Guttman had some thoughts on bootstrapping Perl 6's grammar. He
hoped that his suggested approach would enable lots of people to work on
the thing at once without necessarily getting in each other's way. Adam
Turoff pointed everyone at a detailed description of how Squeak (a free
Smalltalk) got bootstrapped.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=x7u0u0yfpr.fsf@mail.sysarch.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Synopsis 5 updated'></a><h2>Synopsis 5 updated</h2>
<p>Larry announced that he has updated Synopsis 5, which covers Grammars,
rules and all that good stuff. It's now only a week out of date instead
of two years and counting.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20040915062208.GA22692@wall.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<p><a href='http://dev.perl.org/perl6/synopsis/S05.html' target='_blank'>dev.perl.org</a> -- Synopsis 5</p>
<a name='This week on perl6-internals'></a><h1>This week on perl6-internals</h1>
<a name='Namespaces'></a><h2>Namespaces</h2>
<p>Discussion of Dan's namespace proposal really got going this week.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=a06110405bd636771e587@' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a>[10.0.1.2]</p>
<a name='Buffered IO and Parrot Forth'></a><h2>Buffered IO and Parrot Forth</h2>
<p>Matt Diephouse fell foul of a problem with IO buffering when he was
taking a look at Parrot Forth, so he asked the list for help. Leo
supplied the help, so Matt supplied a patch to Parrot Forth which made
it print its prompts correctly when run under modern (CVS) Parrot.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=198c873804091021003cd8d12e@mail.gmail.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Pragma @LOAD is not always honoured'></a><h2>Pragma <code>@LOAD</code> is not always honoured</h2>
<p>Stéphane Payrard was bemused to discovered that parrot routines declared
with the <code>@LOAD</code> pragma don't get automatically executed if they're in
the main segment. He suggested that the issue be either fixed or
documented.</p>
<p>Leo documented it.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20040913003027.GA29524@stefp.dyndns.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='NCI basics'></a><h2>NCI basics</h2>
<p>Charles Somebody tried to crash the monomonikered big leagues by failing
to vouchsafe his surname when he posted a question about getting NCI to
work with wxWindows. For reasons that escape me, the answers (and,
indeed, Charles's surname -- Lowell) appeared in a different thread.</p>
<p>Sadly the answers were more along the lines of &quot;Oops, that's a bug that
is, we'll add it to the RT queue&quot;. Still better to have it identified
than festering away undiscovered.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20040915082722.C5B2F17856F@mail.t0c.de' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=200409151417.48823.parrot@jensbeimsurfen.de' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Language::Zcode'></a><h2>Language::Zcode</h2>
<p>Who says Perl 6 is the only language that's taking a long time to appear on
Parrot? Amir Karger posted his first annual update on his attempt to get
Parrot to emulate the Z-machine. Hopefully subsequent updates will be
more frequent.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20040915044057.68837.qmail@web40702.mail.yahoo.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Meanwhile, in perl6-language'></a><h1>Meanwhile, in perl6-language</h1>
<a name='Ordinals, Hashes and Arrays, oh my!'></a><h2>Ordinals, Hashes and Arrays, oh my!</h2>
<p>David Green had some thoughts on Perl 6's compound data
structures. Larry didn't sound convinced.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=plato-A8E818.17472910092004@x6.develooper.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Writing pack, or something like it'></a><h2>Writing <code>pack</code>, or something like it</h2>
<p>Michele Dondi wondered how to write <code>pack</code>-like functions in Perl 6,
where the first argument is a string which specifies the signature of
the rest of the function call. The proposal stumped me, but maybe you
all can make something of it.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=Pine.LNX.4.58.0409141202210.23717@q.pcteor1.mi.infn.it' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='But is it intuitive?'></a><h2>But is it intuitive?</h2>
<p>No it isn't.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=4146E6D7.1020102@Yahoo.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='S5 Grammar compositions'></a><h2>S5 Grammar compositions</h2>
<p>While peacefully reading Synopsis 5 (Rules &amp; Grammars), Dave Whipp
noticed that grammatical inheritance wasn't as flexible as the Role
based compositions that can be used when working with classes. Larry
wondered allowed about having grammar roles, but I don't think they've
been officially mandated yet...</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20040915175111.10763.qmail@lists.develooper.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Still about subroutines...'></a><h2>Still about subroutines...</h2>
<p>Michele Dondi continues to make my head hurt with zir proposals. In part
it's because I've still not worked out whether zie is male or female,
and in part because, well, zir proposals are challenging. In this
particular proposal zie wondered if there would be a way to magically
write recursive anonymous functions without having to introduce a new
symbol of some sort.</p>
<p>Luke and Larry think there will be such a way, but the precise syntax
hasn't been settled just yet.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=Pine.LNX.4.58.0409161635210.24252@leia.pcteor1.mi.infn.it' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Range quantifier woes'></a><h2>Range quantifier woes</h2>
<p>Jonathan Scott Duff wasn't happy with the new range quantifier syntax in
Synopsis 5. He posted a bunch of questions that were nagging at
him. Larry had some good answers (if you're interested in contributing
to the design of Perl 6 you should <i>really</i> read Larry's replies).</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20040917145714.GB9174@pobox.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Announcements, Apologies, Acknowledgements'></a><h1>Announcements, Apologies, Acknowledgements</h1>
<p>And so ends another summary. I hope you liked it. Sorry for the delay if
you're reading this on the mailing list; this teacher training malarkey
is remarkably tiring.</p>
<p>If you find these summaries useful or enjoyable, please consider
contributing to the Perl Foundation to help support the development of
Perl. You might also like to send feedback or contributions to a
'getting Piers to OSCON 2005' fund to mailto:<a href='mailto:pdcawley@bofh.org.uk'>pdcawley@bofh.org.uk</a></p>
<p><a href='http://donate.perl-foundation.org/' target='_blank'>donate.perl-foundation.org</a> -- The Perl Foundation</p>
<p><a href='http://dev.perl.org/perl6/' target='_blank'>dev.perl.org</a> -- Perl 6 Development site</p>
<p>Or, you can check out my website.</p>
<p><a href='http://www.bofh.org.uk/' target='_blank'>www.bofh.org.uk</a></p>
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